On the flip side, contributions have financial value, otherwise what are we all doing here? I don't think they want a tax deduction necessarily, they're just p

On the flip side, contributions have financial value, otherwise what are we all doing here? I don't think they want a tax deduction necessarily, they're just pointing out that because of how voluntary labour is valued by the tax system it is rational to want to be paid for contributing to non-profits instead of doing it for free. If you spent N hours working and donated your $X*N salary to a non-profit, you'd get a tax deduction for that amount. However if you instead spend the same N hours contributing, you get literally nothing even though the work should be valued at some fraction of $X*N if not the same value (and some laws such as campaign finance limits do treat volunteering of this form to be valued at standard rates even if it's unpaid, so this is not without precedent). I don't think a tax deduction like that would work (everyone will pretend to be donating 16 hours of volunteer time a day), so it's back to charging for your work as a contractor.